Around The Web

Building a habit-forming product doesn’t happen by accident. Discover exactly how Slack created something users can’t live without.

Every SaaS company wants to create something their users can’t live without. But building a habit-forming product isn’t something that happens by accident. It has to be a goal from the get go. Slack, the office collaboration app that’s been valued at $1.2 billion just seven months after launching, is perhaps the best example on the market. Nir Eyal breaks down the reasons for their success in this post on his blog, Nir & Far.

Considering UX vs. UI as you develop your product? It’s time to realize that each role has to be filled individually.

Ok, so maybe pitching UX vs. UI as a title fight worthy of your precious PayPerView dollars wasn’t the way to go. After all, there’s no real winner, they’re working in unison and neither is trying to defeat the other. But one important boxing parallel does exist – you absolutely need two participants. In this post at User Testing, Craig Morrison describes the differences between UX and UI designers and why each is essential to the development of your product.

A free trial for your SaaS product might be a sales tool for converting more prospects, but the fact remains that you’re giving away the farm (or at least part of it) for free. So why should you put in the time and effort to, of all things, enhance what you’re already giving away? Because if you’re trial isn’t working, people are taking advantage of it or giving up all together. In this post on his blog, Lincoln Murphy explains how and why you should create a better SaaS free trial.

Onboarding users is key to establishing a relationship and building trust with your brand, but are you doing it right?

A welcome email for every new user is a no brainer. But is yours as effective as it should be? And are you stopping there? Because you shouldn’t be. Onboarding doesn’t end at sign up. In fact, that’s simply the first of many steps. As this post at AutoSend reveals, there are plenty of avenues and opportunities for onboarding users and you need to, at the very least, seriously consider each of them.

Your product roadmap can take on all sorts of forms, but the important thing is having a plan in place before you start your journey.

Okay, so maybe that headline is a bit misleading. Even the most well thought out vacations hit a few speed bumps here and there (that third margarita, for instance). But any journey you embark upon is bound for more success if you start with a plan, even while recognizing that it won’t be perfect. That’s why Radiant Minds has pulled together 10 critical tools for developing your product roadmap in this post.

If you want data you can actually use, designing smart survey question is a skill you must perfect.

It’s not terribly difficult to get answers when you ask a question. Any conversation with a three year old will show you that. But how do you get the answers that will actually help you out? Stop asking a three year old for directions to the mall for one. Designing smart survey questions for your users isn’t as much of a stretch from that scenario as you might think, which is why this post at KISSMetrics outlines 5 tips that will help you improve your questions, and therefore your answers.

Mastering product management could be the key to keeping your whole business happy.

If you think of your business as a solar system, then your product is like the sun. Sales, customers, support, marketing, engineering and every other facet of the business orbits around it, held in place to varying degrees by its gravitational pull. So as product manager, everyone, by default, revolves around you then, right? Wrong. So wrong. In this post at Instructure Tech Blog you’ll discover that understanding why that is unlocks the key to mastering product management.

Experts will explain what everyone is buzzing about and why during a free hackathon webinar.

You’ve probably overheard it at a coffee shop or even among your own tech team. If not, you’ve certainly seen it mentioned on Twitter. Whether you’re not sure what it is or you’ve been to a few yourself, there’s plenty to learn during Socrata’s free hackathon webinar. They’ll be picking the brains of the GoCode Colorado team, founders of the only statewide hackathon and true experts in the field.